Political Science Approach towards the Study of Corruption. The article refers to the concepts specifying corruption from the domain of political science. It follows the occurrence of the phenomenon in relation to misuse of power for personal profit and provides an overview of theses formulated by political science authors on corruption and misuse of power (e.g. Rose-Ackerman, Warren, Johnston, Klitgaard) in relation to public administration and policy making. Examples and documentation of Slovak experience is provided, particularly in the field of politico-administrative relations and from the exercise of discretionary power of the street level bureaucracy. Corrupted behaviour usually arises in the environment of public power misuse, where institutional and legal framework does not provide sufficient opportunity for the expression of plurality of opinions which consequently is reflected in the unequal participatory access of various economic and political elites as well as interest groups.
Sociológia 2007, Vol. 39 (No. 4: 287-315)

Approaches to Defining Corruption. Article deals with the corruption and multitude of its features in public sector. Analyzing them, they firstly use broad approach trying to identify the hard-to-grasp phenomenon of corruptible behaviour and provide few general definitions. Suggesting that general definitions provide little information for policy makers preventing corruption they later break the term in 10 fields of corruptive behaviour from perspectives of law, economics and political science and provide specific typology of this phenomenon. Authors suggest that by combining both general and case specific approaches a more accurate image of corruption will be provided.
Sociológia 2007, Vol. 39 (No. 4: 316-336)

Struggle for the Definition of Citizenship: Institutional and Discursive Forms and Techniques of Construction of the Image of Foreigner in the Development of French Republican Model of Integration. The so-called riots, taking place in French suburbs in November 2005, reopened a public and academic debate on character of French immigration policy and its future. Article aims to outline a wider context of immigration issue in France by analyzing both institutional and discursive aspects of construction of image of foreigner in historic relation of inter-national domination between dominant group represented by state and its republican model of integration and inferior group of North African immigrants.
Article considers some theoretical implications of relations between a project of nation-state and institution of citizenship, which in France led to the genesis and evolution of assimilation model of integration. In such a framework, colonial discourse represent historically important example of construction of foreigner's image, which shaped later political debates on reconstitution and “crises” of French nation-state. Moreover, history and development of French immigration policy is presented in context of some structural changes in labour market, which led to the establishment of new international division of labour and new kind of urban poverty. Concentration of the working-class poor immigrants in highly modernistic neighbourhoods and its spatial segregation is the most visible unintended consequence of French immigration policy. Special attention is paid to the reformulation of immigration issue as a security problem, which revived colonial discourse by reification of cultural differences and by ethnicization of social relations. Instead of blaming second and third generation immigrants for their failure to integrate into major society, unrests form November 2005 should be understood as a specific form of political and cultural protest against their structural discrimination in work, housing and everyday life as a result of new image of dangerous foreigners created by more restrictive measures of immigration policy.
Sociológia 2007, Vol. 39 (No. 4: 337-356)